and then in 1996 she released her collected colums and i bought it and read it and loved the book so much i hid it under my mattress so i wouldn't lose it, only i forgot i did so i really did lose it and spent hours looking for it and yesterday it just came to me and i went down to my old room and peeled back the mattress and there it was and i read it again.
and a week ago i finally bought
the book she wrote 1997 called 'saker under huden'
(things under the skin) and ever since i
have been obsessed, and i wish it was in english because i know so many who would love the
book but in a way it's intranslatable because of the way she uses the language to emphasise
some things. and then yesterday i found an old paper i saved from 1996 that had an interview
with it and it was all yellowy and spotty and dusty because it had been on the floor in my old
room that got flooded and then dried out all on itself, but i managed to pry the pages open
and read it anyways and cussed because the pictures were so stained and crinkled and un-scannable.
and i made an attempt a few days ago and translated a small excerpt from the book and here i am with another excerpt i found at her website. i've gone over the text about 10 times trying to get it to read like the original in swedish, and i realise somebody better than me could probably do a better job at it, but i really wanted it up to read so here it is and i can't explain to you what the text does to me but it does something that feels sharp inside.
(Love, Pelle, Anders and Siah are names: Love is her husband, Siah is her sister. i've tried to format the text and grammar to match the original but.. heh.)
You must go get him, you must get Love, Love or Pelle, definately not Anders.
You must go get him now, i will die soon so you're not allowed to leave me. Don't leave
me but rather hang onto me, you can hang onto me the hardest you can can't you and walk slowly and
help me look for Love, Love or Pelle. There is nobody else and it's definately Love we must find
but if you notice that i'm about to die and only Pelle is nearby he will have to do.
But i know that Pelle doesn't like me for real, so we have to find Love now it's urgent.
We have to walk slowly because it is when i move too fast that i die. I break,
crack up and it starts to trickle blood inside of me and nobody will ever find
the wound. Don't ask me why i did it, i hate the idea that everyone always get
so angry. My dream image is me, alone, my dream image is that i never existed.
Love isn't here right? and he would only get angry, he would get real angry.
That is the last thing one wants, for people to get angry. You can't leave me
because then i die, i die because i can't breathe and the palate feels strange
and the tongue is thick like it gets when one is about to cry, maybe i'm about
to cry. Maybe you should sit down with me and call out to somebody who recognises
Love and who can look for him, Love or Pelle but absolutely not Anders, say it.
Can you see anybody who recognises Love here, please sit with me, we can talk a bit,
if it starts to bleed inside me, will there be a thick puddle of blood on the inside then?
or does it spread out like a bloodlayer around the body?
What do you want to talk about? I don't have the energy to walk more because
it is starting to hurt, but maybe i'm just imagening it, i've done that before.
You can't believe this is happening, huh? and you don't ask why and you don't
get angry. I was sitting up there and there was nobody who wanted to talk to me and
everything was stinging and as usual i couldn't breathe and i'm so tired of not being
able to breathe. Love isn't coming is he? I like hospitals, do you
get to decide yourself who are allowed to and who are not allowed to come to visit? Hey if i write a list and then you
can put it in my pocket and make sure they find it when they undress me
to put on one of those hospitalgowns. And please try and explain to them that i really want
to keep my nailpolish, at hospitals they care, please because i painted on fresh today,
i got it from Siah and it's iceprincesscolour. Here's the list of those who are not allowed to
come and see me: Anders, Pelle. Here are those who are not allowed to know anything at all:
the mom, dad, brother, grandma, grandpa, uncle, aunt, aunt, cousin, cousin, cousin.
here are those who are allowed to come and see me: Love, Siah. And hey if i die they are not allowed to put me in the
familygrave in uppsala, i will not lie there, i was going to go to a lawyer and sort it
out and get it in paper, i want everything in paper. But now this happened so i didn't
have time to get it done. Why can't one die as one wishes? without people interfering.
Hey has Love come? i can't feel him here next to me, he isn't sitting here next to me
is he? Yeah i have to lie on the table, hope i don't vomit because then everything will
probably be cut up, because there's such force in vomit.
It's probably for the best that he's not here because then he would only get angry
and then i wouldn't be able to keep from crying because when he's with
[me] i always break down so completely because everything becomes so sad.
I felt so sad and i was so alone and to stop the breathingproblem i swallowed a thing,
i had broken the glass long ago and i held a piece of glass and so i swallowed it like a
pill against the breathing-problem. So it was like an emergencypill, nothing dangerous at
all, a very large emergencypill, a pill because i hated so much and i wanted to end it,
because what i hate is located in there in the breathing and i can't reach it, i had had enough.
Don't get angry, it's the last one wants, for people to get angry, but they always do.